1. Technical Field
The present invention is generally related to the field of garment hangers, and specifically to a two-piece slidably collapsible garment hanger.
2. Background Art
Garments are sometimes overly stretched and/or damaged when being removed from or placed on rigid hangers in the conventional manner. In addition, the convenience of removing the hanger is impeded by its rigidity.
The stretching of a garment usually occurs because the distance between the hanger arms is greater than the opening of the neck of the garment. To prevent damage to some types of clothing, hangers have to be removed from the garment by manipulating the hanger down through the bottom of the garment. This is not only a cumbersome operation that must be done more by feel than sight, but the hook element may damage the garment during this process. Furthermore, if the garment is a button type, the necessary number of buttons must be undone before removal.
Because of the small necks of some garments, garment hanger manufacturers have attempted to compensate for this problem by making collapsible garment hangers that remedy some of the deficiencies of rigid hangers. In one such class of devices, a central hook element attaches to two sliding arms. These designs allows the two arms to collapse toward the hook element for easier insertion into the neck of a hanger, and, once inserted, the arms slide out to their fully extensible position to hold the garment in place. However, these types of designs do not address adequately the main problem they seek to resolve, as they are often still to large to fit directly into small-necked garments even in their collapsed position. This problem is a function of the need for a sizable central element that is capable of holding both of the sliding arms in place while extended.
In another class of collapsible garment hanger devices, the hangers have two arms that fold downward after releasing a locking member. However, these variants often have manually activated locking devices that require a second hand to release. These designs also often use spring-loaded locking mechanisms and as such suffer from the difficulty of matching the proper spring force to variable garment weights in order to maintain a proper hanging or shoulder angle. Much like the previously described hanger class, these designs also often fail to collapse enough to fit in small-necked garments. This is the result of the fact that in their collapsed position their minimum width is a function of not only the horizontal width of the central element but the width of the folded hanger arms.
In another existing class of collapsible garment hanger devices, the hangers have molded hinges and a device for locking the movable arms in an up position. However, as in the previous mentioned folding designs, this type of hanger often does not collapse enough to fit small-necked garments easily, such as turtlenecks.
Yet another existing collapsible hanger device uses a swinging arm design. This variant consists of two arms that are attached to the hook element in such a manner that they collapse by swinging together to form one arm with an asymmetrically located hook. This design allows for easy insertion of the hanger into the neck of even the smallest necked garment. However, as this device too uses a spring-loaded swinging mechanism, it suffers from the varying garment weight problem that similar other spring-loaded devices have. However, rather than matching the proper spring force to hold up the garment once inserted, the device must match the spring force with that needed to push out and collapse the arms after insertion and before removal.